Insurgency in the North Caucasus

The Insurgency in the North Caucasus was a low-level armed conflict between Russia and Islamist militants in the North Caucasus. It followed the official end of the Second Chechen War, and the region went dormant due to a Russian government crackdown on the Caucasus Emirate militants.

War
In 2009, the Russian government declared the Second Chechen War to be at an end, as they had effectively defeated the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and the separatist insurgency. However, many former separatists became Islamists and pledged allegiance to Dokka Umarov's Salafist Caucasus Emirate, which waged jihad against the Russian government. The struggle attracted fighters from the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, and Central Asia, and these foreign Mujahideen fighters fought for the Caucasus Emirate.

While the conflict originated in Chechnya, the Russian government relied on the clans loyal to Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov to crush the Islamist insurgencies, and Kadyrov's militias committed grave human rights abuses. Dagestan and Ingushetia bore the brunt of the early insurgency, with Dagestan having the highest levels of violence and extremism in the North Caucasus due to the struggle between its Sufis and Salafists, the two major denominations of the devoutly religious Sunni Muslims of the country. The brutality of state security forces in Ingushetia drove young men to join the Islamists, but the insurgency had been defeated by 2015. From 2010 to 2011, violence flared up in Kabardino-Balkaria following the killing of militant leader Anzor Astemirov, with the militants murdering several civilians (including Russian tourists).

The rise of the Islamic State in 2014 led to a new threat emerging in the North Caucasus. In June 2015, the Islamic State created "Vilayat Kavkaz" as one of its "provinces", and many fighters loyal to the Caucasus Emirate - which had been weakened by Umarov's death in 2014 - defected to the Islamic State. In December 2016, IS leader Rustam Asildarov was killed in a Russian raid, but the group later carried out a church attack in Kizlyar on 18 February 2018 and a knife attack on a police station in Grozny on 20 August 2018.

However, the insurgency was largely defeated during the 2010s. On 17 May 2015, the government of Ingushetia announced that terrorism had been defeated in the republic; on 2 September 2016, Kabardino-Balkaria announced that its insurgency had also been destroyed. By 2017, it was reported that the Caucasus Emirate had essentially split into small factions and groups, with some former Emirate fighters joining IS, and others travelling to Syria to join Tahrir al-Sham. On 7 February, all sabotage and terrorist groups in Dagestan were said to have been eliminated. Having no clear political objectives, the Caucasus Emirate was defeated, and the insurgency had largely been defeated, despite sporadic terrorist attacks by IS.